This is completely random but I felt the need to write a journal on this idea. Some of you may have seen in the news that old lady that got tased, but, that's not why I'm writing this. Honestly that is the least of the issues I have been mulling over.

Consider this: all officers of the law and given a badge and a gun, no? But with the badge comes responsibility, and with the gun as well. However, because you have a badge doesn't mean you can gun down anyone. In fact, this is almost never the case as it is almost never used unless the officer is threatened. This is something that is pretty easily understood by most people that "Hey, even though I'm a cop, and I have a gun, I could get into some serious crap if I just go around filling people with lead."

With a taser? What are they made for? To stun people. Oh, shocking people with 50,000 volts isn't so bad; after all it's not (always) lethal. Say you had a very angry person or someone who was distraught and perhaps slightly (even VERY slightly) threatening in a situation? Maybe I could use a taser to assert my authority over this individual? Sure, why not? They gave it to me after all.

No? You have a nightstick, too, you say? But they don't use it as often because people would immediately point the finger and scream "police brutality!" if they used a blunt weapon on someone. After all, tasers are made just to stun, not to harm. Right? So therefore I could use it as I see fit because I can justify using it just because I feel they were stepping out of line?

Yeah, you could. But I don't see anyone chasing you around with a cattle prod because you didn't tip your waiter. I don't see your wives hooking a car battery to your ears because you argued with them as to why you watched the football game instead of doing the laundry. Your kid doesn't drop a plugged in toaster in your tub while you bathe because you missed his ball game. Get the point?

Police should have to take a rigorous examination to be given the privelage to carry a taser. This may sound paradoxical because I still think they can carry guns, but, as I said, due to the inherent nature of the gun, it requires more exercise of restraint before it is even pulled on someone. Tasers can easily be abused by an officer on a citizen who is helpless to do anything about it.

There was a student who was asking a question at a podium where John Kerry was a speaker at the meeting. The student brought up some extremely touchy issues, granted, but John Kerry was even trying to answer his questions and ask the officers to stop trying to push him around and order him because of the questionable issues and his energetic attitude towards it. It can be said that the officers were there mainly to protect any harm from happening, specifically to the speaker John Kerry. But they wouldn't even listen to him. He himself did not feel threatened; why should the officers have reacted that way? They drug the student from the podium and finally forced him down and tased him after he struggled because they would not say why they were trying to arrest him. The core issue is this: the officers could very well and were likely infriging upon the student's first amendment rights, and abused their authority to carry a taser by enforcing their infringement of his rights by tasing the student when he posed no physical threat to the at least 4 armed police officers who took him down.

A man who spoke no english (was danish or polish methinks) flew into a (canadian?) airport and was held up by standard customs paperwork. After quite a few hours he became visibly agitated and tried confronting a member of the airport staff. Police became involved into what escalated into a scuffle, resulting in the man being tased by several officers, at the same time. The directors for security lied about how many officers had supposedly taken down the man, they had lied and said he had continued resisting after they tried to stop him the first time, and they lied about officers having been standing at ready when they were actually tasing him. These lies were exposed after a video surfaced which was detained by the police, and then ordered out by the court after the camera had been returned with blank memory cards. Why the fuss? The man died as a direct result of multiple tasings, and being tased by two guns simaltaneously. A few months previous, doctrine had passed allowing for the 'neccessary' use of two officers tasing the same suspect at once. As a result, a man died. Why? Because a taser is designed to work as a single unit that will pose as little of a lethal threat to the target as possible. They are not desgined to be used in tandem, which resulted in a fatality at the hands of police.

To be fair, I respect cops, but, they are people just like us. That being said, sometimes people take things too far or take advantage of something they are entrusted with to use and protect with, not to assail with.